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Versatility

I’m so versatile!

(How versatile am I?)

I’m so versatile, I use varied voices to post everything from writing advice, to poetry, to discourses on politics, philosophy, and God–probably ensuring that I displease at least two-thirds of my audience with every post I make!

For some reason, people decided to make an award for that sort of regular alienation. They’re thoughtful like that. Especially the good journalists over at The Grimm Report, who took some time off from grimly reporting scandalous doings in the realm of fairy tales, and noticed that, boy, I talk about a lot of different things.

Anyway, here are the rules for publicly admitting my versatility:Number One: List the rules and regulations of this time honored tradition.
Doing that now.Number Two: Display the badge of the Versatile Blogger Award for all the world to covet.

Wha-BAM.Number Three: Include a link back to the blogger who was able to spot your genius.
Done.Number Four: Divulge seven (7) interesting facts about yourself.Getting there, getting there…Number Five: Nominate fifteen (15) others for this outstanding achievement.
Fifteen (15) whole others? Oh my. Well, I’ll see what I can come up with.

Seven interesting facts about me, eh? It would seem more appropriate to list seven versatile facts, showing that, beyond the bloggosphere, I have or am capable of many uses. If I can indeed scrounge up that many–I may be a versatile writer, but let’s see how versatile I am as a person…

1. I’m not bad at fixing house-stuff.
Sinks, hinges, floor tiles… basically, anything you might find broken in a vacated apartment. It comes of being the daughter of a property manager. It comes of many hours holding plumbing parts for Dad and passing him various tools. It comes, in other words, at a price greater than I would have shelled out for it.

2. I can pack a lot of things into a small space.And I’m unreasonably proud of it. Meat into a freezer, leaves into a green waste can, clothes into a suitcase–I can get a lot of stuff into an improbably small space.
Again, learned this one from my father, the Grand Master Packer. Once, he’d stuffed the trunk and back seat full for travel. Then Mom decided she wanted to take an old-fashioned sewing machine home; the big foot-pedal kind. So Dad unpacked everything, put the sewing machine in the trunk, and repacked everything around it. I consider myself to have gained a black belt in his packing dojo, but I will never best the man.

3. I can martial art.Speaking of dojos and belts and suchlike, I’m a white belt in Jiu Jitsu! #ImpressiveRight? Oh, shut up, I only just started. But I’ve been involved in Hapkido and Silat for longer, enough to get along. And before that, there were four years of fencing. So, some sword, some knife, some hand-to-hand. That’s decently versatile right there! Now, to hope I could defend myself with any of it…

4. I can sew(ish).Speaking of that old sewing machine, I do have some… I won’t say skill, that’s incorrect. Talent? I’m not sure I have that either. I like to sew sometimes, okay? I designed and made a decent cape, I made a pillow and embroidered a Sig Sauer P220 onto it; the odd project like that.

5. I can climb stuff.Roofs, trees, walls, that kind of thing. It’s not spectacular, and I don’t think it’s even especially unusual, but it is a tendency I’ve seen declining in today’s youth. Not enough kids finding all the ladder-less routes onto their roofs; not enough falling out of trees onto their foreheads on the sidewalk. Yes, I have done both. Explains a lot, yes?

6. I can draw.Slightly better than I sew.

This is Syawn, the main character in Ever the Actor. This is also the absolute height of my drawing skill level. Yeah, this took me painstaking hours.

7. I can memorize really well.
Bible verses, dialogues, monologues, and especially lyrics. Anything I put my mind to memorizing, and some things I don’t. I love things with complexity or fiddly bits, like Tom Lehrer’s Lobachevsky and Elements, anything with quickly-sung lyrics like Dr. Suess vs. William Shakespeare, and anything with little to no linguistic frame of reference like the Skyrim theme.
But if I start getting smug over winning an award for memorizing like eighty verses in a week of camp or some such nonsense (Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall), I just remember that there are many people who memorize the entire Tanakh word-for-word, and my ego deflates back down to healthy levels. I’ll bow out against anyone who takes the Pentateuch in stride.